Why You Shouldn't Answer Phone Surveys at Work - Another Way to Get SCAMMED!

Surveys, for the most part, have always been thought to be harmless. It strokes our egos to think that someone wants our opinion about something. But "the times they are a-changin'", folks, and surveys - whether they be by phone or email - are now often SCAMS in disguise! And that holds particularly true for people who call you at work and ask you to "answer a short survey". Don't do it!!!!

These scam companies are out for one thing - your money (or your company's money, to be more precise), and they have devised some pretty clever little schemes to separate us from our company's hard-earned cash! The scam companies who call us at work have figured out that they can scam dozens or hundreds of people into paying for newsletters or CDs or books because most employees don't want the hassle of fighting with these crooks even if they realize they've been scammed. So they simply send the invoice they receive to their accounting department for payment.

Our company has been the victim of one particular scam company for over a dozen years. No one realized it until one employee came forward recently and said "I didn't order this stuff and I'm not going to authorize payment of this invoice!" Instead, he called me - I work in the Legal Department - and asked what could be done.

Our company generally sends out "cease and desist" letters whenever we receive such a complaint about a fraudulent invoice. We threaten them with contacting the Better Business Bureau, the FTC, the United States Post Office, and any other agency that might care about such activities. We generally don't actually follow through on these threats unless we see any additional activity on their part after they have received our letter.

We can determine this continuing activity quite easily, because we ask our Accounts Payable department to deactivate this company's payment record so no further invoices will be paid. This, of course, only works if the scammers have been successful in the past in getting money from us and are listed on our vendor payment system.

We also have discussed the possibility of having a "SCAM ALERT" list on our company Intranet so employees can check the list if they think they might be getting scammed, and can add companies to the list when they find out they have, indeed, been scammed.

It was during such a request to Accounts Payable to deactivate a vendor number for a scam company that we recently discovered that a company called Progressive Business Publications, in Malvern, PA, had scammed our company out of over $10,000 in the past 12 years!! You can bet we'll be signing up for the class action lawsuit against these fraudsters if one is ever initiated!

Here's how PBP's scam works: They call an employee on the phone (although we are starting to see emails from them, too, so beware!). They ask the employee to answer a few survey questions. One of those questions is the employee's date of birth.

Then they ask the employee if they would be interested in receiving a free sample of a newsletter. They tell the employee that if they don't like the newsletter, they can simply mark the invoice "Cancel" and pay nothing. Some employees agree; others say no. Some people receive a cheapy newsletter; others never receive anything.

It doesn't really matter because regardless, in approximately 2-4 months, the employee receives an invoice from PBP telling them that they have been receiving the newsletter for several months, they have not indicated that they wanted to cancel the newsletter, and they now owe hundreds of dollars!!

Ignore the invoice and you will soon begin receiving "collection calls" ... also a part of the scam ... these guys are good!! If the employee or the accounting department tries to argue with the collection agency about the validity of the invoice, they are told "Well, we have the employee's date of birth right here to prove that we spoke to him." A lot of holes in that argument of course, but it's sometimes enough to weaken your resolve.

What will most employees do at this point? Pay the invoice to get this company off their back and mark it up to experience. Unfortunately, that's not enough, because the company simply moves on to their next "mark" and the scam begins again.

What can your company do to fight these types of scams? Encourage employees to report them. Put articles about such scams in your company newsletter. Add a "Scam Alert List" to your company intranet site. Write "cease and desist" letters. Most of the time, a combination of these tactics will be enough to get rid of a scam company. But never fear, there is another one (or 10 more!) right behind them!

Beware, everyone!